Deflationary Strike

New Zealand Listener, Volume 17, Issue 438, 14 November 1947, Page 19

Deflationary Strike

Recently there was almost an economic crisis in Japan. The lumberets and mill workers took a new-found democracy to heart and went on strike for better conditions. One of the results was no paper for bank currency; the usual weekly contribution of a million or so notes could not be made to bolster the inflated economy; and had the strike continued for much longer than it did a first-class crisis would have occurred. Much of the mountainous areas of Japan is covered with forest, planted to reduce erosion as well as for timber, and Hokkaido, particularly, is noted for its timber products. For days at a time we passed by train through apparently everlasting forest,’ with small picturesque milling villages built into the shadow of high trees, and with tremendous stacks of timber waiting to be trucked away. Yet to-day one of the products for reconstruction that Japan is gravely short of is building timber, The shortage, actually, is not of timber at all, but of the railways and shipping for its transport; and while millions of ‘families in Honshu are without houses or are living three or four families to a house, there is almost unlimited timber, already milled, deteriorating in the harsh, climate of Hokkaido.